


An Iron-Bound Faith

by Ceewelsh, Chimeraspeak



Series: Life and the Living [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Captain America uncovered during the 1990s, Depictions of injury, Gen, Hard of Hearing Clint Barton, Podfic, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 1.5-2 Hours, discussed aftermath of canon torture, discussion of forensic evidence, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25582813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceewelsh/pseuds/Ceewelsh, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chimeraspeak/pseuds/Chimeraspeak
Summary: Three weeks after Steve Rogers awakens to a world that’s long since left him behind, he meets Howard’s son in a crowded bar. Two years after Hydra’s infiltration of SHIELD is discovered, Tony Stark is kidnapped by a terrorist organization known as the Ten Rings.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Tony Stark
Series: Life and the Living [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1854127
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15
Collections: Pod_Together 2020





	An Iron-Bound Faith

**Podfic:**  


_(or click[here](https://ia601508.us.archive.org/29/items/an-iron-bound-faith/An%20Iron-Bound%20Faith.mp3) if your browser doesn't support HTML 5)_

[2007]

Widows do not bend. They do not snap. They do not crumble. Natasha is proof of that. 

She has outlived the place that raised her, survived the transformation from hunter to human, been reforged under Steve’s tutelage. In all that time, she has not faltered.

Questioned orders, yes. 

Made poor decisions, yes. 

But not once has she crumpled beneath that weight.

It is a truth that is unfortunate and a blessing in equal measure. Because now, with the fangs of panic pressed against the beating beneath her ribs, Natasha can do nothing to fight back.

She lets her head fall against the wall, closing her eyes so that she doesn’t have to watch the unbreakable Captain Rogers paw anxiously at the papers on the table in front of him. 

“It’s a direct order, Steve.” Coulson’s voice is low to keep his words from traveling through the hotel walls. It’s also strained. _Tense_ , not thin with frustration.

Panic rolls off of him in waves, but instead of letting it flow out through his gestures, he cages it inside. Holding back so that the only sign of it is the clinging film in his throat. “I know you want to step in, but we can’t afford to draw attention. Not when we’re so close to tracking down Pierce’s operation.”

She bites back a huff of anger, lets her fingernails dig into her crossed arms. 

Steve pauses in his exploration of the papers, turning to fix Coulson with a gaze that Natasha does not envy. “Is that you talking, Phil, or is it Fury?”

Years of collaboration have done nothing to diminish Coulson’s sense of hero-worship. He still sees the captain as a paragon. A man above men. It’s enough to pity the scathing look.

To his credit, Coulson does not fold.

“Director Fury is of the opinion that this can be left to the US military. It happened on their territory, under their protection. Stark is a known figure. The media isn’t going to let this go, and between that and the company’s refusal to sell anything until his personal approval has gone through, his rescue is top priority.”

Steve stands, pushing the cheap hotel chair aside with more grace than anyone of his size ought to have.

“How quickly can they locate one man in a wasteland?” 

Phil stops and squares his posture. His breath is shallow. A failing attempt to cover fear. 

“They have it well in hand. Our first priority has to be Hydra. The military can only fight what they can see. We have to cover the rest.”

Steve’s jaw works as his fists tighten at his sides. Coulson’s point stands. Pierce’s cell could discover that they are being tailed and vanish again, their stash of weapons disappearing with them. They’re working on a tight deadline.

“Phil. It’s _Tony_.” 

The hotel room feels, for a moment, even smaller.

Just before Natasha turned sixteen, Steve took her to the Grand Canyon. They drove through the night, and he let her take a stretch of the isolated dirt road on her own, curling up in the passenger’s seat for a catnap as the lights of civilization faded from view.

They camped by the side of the road at the canyon mouth, and the next morning, they took to the trails.

On the bank of the Colorado River, between the towering, painted walls, Natasha was insignificant. Small and unseen. Helpless against the rock and sky.

In the canyon, Steve had been right beside her. And that meant she was safe. Safe, even in a place where she meant nothing.

Stark has no one.

If he were a Widow, if he were steel, he could endure it. But he cares far too much for that. He always has.

“If we are too incompetent to finish this ourselves, quickly, then what good are we against Hydra?” 

Coulson is a good man, and good men are not as susceptible to smooth-silk words.

“You know him. You know he’s waiting.”

Coulson is a good man, and flattery or threats cannot change his convictions.

“He trusts us. Trusts you. Think through it. He’s going to stay alive, no matter what it takes, because he’ll think we’re coming to get him.”

Coulson is a good man, and few things move a good man like guilt.

Steve’s breath catches, because he’s a good man too, vulnerable to the same knife that’s twisting into Coulson’s heart. Collateral damage.

Natasha hates collateral damage. It reeks of desperation, a lack of skill. And she does not lack skill.

She is not good. Not the same way they are. But she’s compromised too.

Stark doesn’t deserve this. 

He’s no saint, but he’s also the man who needles Coulson until the placid expression cracks to let real emotion show. The man who patiently guides Steve through new circuitry configurations and technological interfaces. The man, who, when introduced to a feral girl living in a foreign land, chose to treat her with respect.

Coulson exhales, his eyes glazing over. “Give me an hour. I’ll go over the documentation again. Find us a loophole.”

And just like that, the argument is won. The bitter manipulation is worth every small betrayal.

At least, that is what Natasha tells herself.

[1991]

The bar is more familiar than the barracks.

Steve has never been much of a drinker. He’d been a lightweight before the experiment, and a beer just wasn’t worth forcing Buck to carry him home. After the serum, alcohol had been more of a social tool. Useful for greasing the skids of the Howling Commandos’ ramshackle fellowship.

Sure, he’s been to a lot of watering holes. Dozens in Europe, and more than a few stateside. But the bar is more familiar than the SHIELD barracks.

The running murmur of idle, carefree talk. The music pulsing through the room. The sharp scent of booze and the cloying smell of people packed close together. It hits him all at once. A rightness, a familiarity, that the spartan SHIELD accommodations lack, even though they’re not that different from the barracks back in Camp Lehigh.

He wants to stop. To bask in it and forget. But he’s here on a mission, and that rules out indulgence. Any right he had to reminisce died with Howard Stark.

Steve slides deeper into the bar without attracting much notice. The clothes Coulson smuggled in for him blend well enough that the only second looks he receives are the flattering yet uncomfortable kind. There’s something surreal about garish, costume-bright nylon rendering him nearly invisible.

He’s never worn nylon before. During the war, it all went to the parachutes. It’s another reminder of how late he is.

The kid looks so much like Howard that Steve stares. If it wasn’t for the slightly rounder edge to his face and the patchy stubble, he might have mistaken them for the same person.

He is flanked on either side. At his left sits a caucasian man with short, curly hair and a set of car keys in a death grip. On his right is a man with dark skin and a sharp posture that screams military. Both have a drink set out in front of them. Neither has been touched.

Howard’s son, on the other hand, has two drained glasses on the table and is taking a swig from the third.

He’s poggled. The kind of poggled that would impress Dugan and the boys.

Not that Steve judges him for it. If funds hadn’t been so sparse when his mother passed, he would have done the same. Tried, when it was Bucky. And if the serum weren’t a factor, he might have come here—or somewhere like here—of his own accord.

46 years too late for a date.

21 days too late to save a friend.

At least Peggy is alive. Alive, and enjoying her retirement alongside a husband whose name Steve has chosen not to learn.

The two men flanking the younger Stark give Steve dark looks when he slides into an empty seat at their table. Steve almost thanks them for it. It’s good to know someone is protecting him, picking up the slack.

“Do I know you?”

Howard’s son, _Anthony_ , according to Coulson’s files, slurs as he speaks and leans forward, squinting.

“I knew your dad. You might have seen pictures.”

Steve pulls an artificial leather wallet from his pocket and draws his ID card from a slot along the interior. The watchful military man traces every gesture with his eyes. The card clicks as it is set against the table. Steve hesitates for a moment but passes it to the man. Stark doesn’t seem to notice, nose buried in his glass again.

The man scrutinizes the piece of plastic, then looks up at Steve with furrowed eyebrows and a half-open mouth. A moment of silence hangs uncomfortably in the air. Stark’s second friend starts up a nervous drumbeat against the table as Stark himself continues drinking like the world outside his cup doesn’t exist.

With a quiet scraping sound, the military man passes the card into the twitchy fingers of his ally, and the anxious thumping cuts off. There’s another second of thought and silence, and then the curly-haired man looks up.

“No kidding?”

A laugh pulls from Steve’s lips. It is a wry, unsettled thing, one that’s bitter against his tongue. “Is it that hard to believe?”

“No, no—”

Before the man can continue to stammer, Steve cuts him off. “It’s just as far-fetched to me as it is to you.”

“Wait, you’re SHIELD.” Stark says, letting his glass thud against the table.

A look from the other soldier keeps Steve from issuing a correction. “That’s what his card says.” He extends a hand. “James Rhodes.”

Steve accepts the offered handshake. “Are you army?”

It’s the man’s turn to laugh. “US Air Force.”

The history books available back at the base do mention the fact that the Army Air Forces were reformed into their own branch of the military, but it still takes him by surprise. Fortunately, Rhodes takes pity on him, and redirects the focus to the man with twitchy fingers. “Happy Hogan.”

“Security for the evening. An designated driver,” Hogan says, still fiddling with the keyring in his hands.

Anthony chokes on the next swig. “No, you’re not the DD. The plan for tonight is to get as wasted as humanly possible. You’re actively defeating the purpose.”

He rocks back, balancing precariously between the table and his chair’s two back legs, then waves frantically at the nearest person in an apron. The gesture is loose, sloppy. If the goal is to get…wasted, then Anthony has a pretty incredible head start.

“Four more,” he says, “ayysap.”

Hogan and Rhodes don’t react to the slurred collection of sounds at the end of the statement, so Steve is forced to assume that it actually means something. He can ask Coulson about it later. That is, if Coulson hasn’t been penalized for helping him slip out of base with a borrowed car.

“Kind of you to offer, but you don’t have to— “

Stark scoffs, his hand balling against the tabletop in a fist. “If you put up with my old man, I figure the least you’re owed is some booze on his dime.”

The drinks arrive in an instant. The scent alone is enough to prove that it’s serious stuff. A tremor runs through Stark’s wrist as he picks one up, but not a single drop is spilled as he knocks it back.

The kid wants to forget. Steve does too.

He raises the glass to his lips and drains it in one go. It’s sharp, burning, strong. Might even leave him with a brief moment of dizziness, if he’s lucky.

Across the table, Stark grins and orders another round.

[2007]

Tony wakes choking.

Pressure drives into his sinuses and throat, and his breath is damp and heavy. The air settles slick against his tongue. He gags, and shooting pain flares out along his chest.

His skin burns. Like something pressed against it has rubbed it raw.

What—what happened?

Hazy, half-formed memories float across the surface of his mind, but they are indistinct. Piecemeal. The pulsing beep of a heart monitor. The old Stark industries logo, one plastered across the side of a missile the company stopped producing a decade back. Searing pain in his arms. A stranger’s face looming over him, eyes narrowing in focus.

Tony doesn’t know where he is, or how exactly he got there. He isn’t altogether certain that he wants to be conscious enough to consider potential answers. Regardless, the unfamiliar cloth texture against his skin and the blazing pain in his torso make one thing clear.

He needs to push down the panic and open his eyes. 

The odds of safety have always been low. Being a Stark is risky business, and playing part-time ally to Captain America is, as Steve might put it, _chancy_.

Good thing Tony likes to roll the dice.

The ceiling is made of rock. Cavernous rock. Dark, cavernous rock that swallows the light from scattered, bare halogen bulbs that line the room.

He’s flat on his back on a cot, in a cave, wrapped in several pieces of clothing that aren’t his. His chest itches. Burns. Wrapped in bandages, he realizes through the fog. His fingers drift to probe lightly at the spot.

No. No, that isn’t—

His hand brushes against the intimately familiar texture of wire insulation. _Industrial_ wire insulation. Thick, cheap casing, not the lightweight, reinforced material used for medical devices.

Tony freezes, remembering the pressure and cough in the back of his throat.

He claws at his face. Nails catch on a knot of medical tape and a strip of tubing.

He tightens his trembling fingers around the tape and pulls. It takes a few, agonizing seconds to tear the tube free, and he dry-retches as it scrapes against the back of his throat. He tosses it aside the second it’s out.

He lies flat on his back, letting his breath come in shallow gasps. He needs to get it regulated out. He needs his wits about him.

Last he recalls, he was showing the Air Force’s brass the gold-titanium alloy body armor. He’d put on a good show, pitting it against the latest Hammer Industries rifle and some of their machine gun models too, but the response had been lackluster. Protective gear is not what Rhodey’s superiors had expected when Stark Industries re-entered the military contracting game.

Not that he developed it for them. It’s meant to keep Phil from getting himself shot and then acting like he has Steve’s healing factor.

And Nat thinks Mr. Agent is smart.

He’d wandered back to the Hummers, hopped into a vehicle with a handful of airmen, then stopped Rhodey from joining him with a snarky comment and a closed door. On the way back, the airmen plied him for information about his company’s future.

The question was—is—a moral tangle. In the first few days of his leadership, Obadiah Stane still hovered at his ear. Now, the thought makes Tony recoil in disgust. Old friend of his dad’s or not, Obadiah was caught red-handed selling weapons under the table as far back as ’97.

The betrayal had been a bitter pill to swallow. Still, Obie was removed from the board immediately, and the company as a whole not long after. A few months of recalibration and some choice demonstrations of arc reactor technology later, and Tony had convinced the board to cease all business with the military.

And then Coulson had been clipped by a .40 S&W. The body armor followed not long after.  
“Military contracting, yes, but not weapons,” he’d told them.

Then, bullets ripped through the tempered-glass windshield of the Hummer. The driver slumped over without even a cry of pain. The uniformed woman in the passenger seat gasped, the sound thick with burbling liquid.

The man with him in the backseat swore. Before Tony could reach out, the soldier pushed him to the floor, kicked the door open, and charged into the lead rain.

He never came back.

Tony staggered from the car by himself. An explosion went off, bursting in an eruption of sand and flame. The tremors rattled his teeth in his skull.

He hissed as he remembered the tiny metal package wrapped up in the trunk of the vehicle. The body armor. It would’ve shielded them. They’d be bruised, but alive.

Stumbling forward, he slumped to the ground behind the cover of a cluster of rocks.

Years of work with SHIELD told him this was no coincidence. Was Hammer behind this? Another competitor?

There was a thump and another burst of sand to his right, just a yard away from the rocks. An oblong, metal casing. The clean logo on the side was unmistakable. The old Stark Industries flashing. Ordinance he’d helped design.

Obadiah.

He cursed, scrambled back, but the concussive force slammed into him first, then a wave of fiery pain. White-hot barbs dug into his chest, and all he could think of as the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth was the irony.

His own missile.

Now he’s in a cave, the walls slick with condensation and air heavy with dust. His body burns. His mind spins.

There are wires over his heart.

He reaches for them, to pull or prod or even to get a decent read on their gauge.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

There’s not enough profanity in the world to answer that, so Tony doesn’t bother opening his mouth. Instead, he struggles upright, hands fumbling for the gauze that wraps his torso.

“I advise against that. It’s a lot to take in.”

Movement catches his attention. A man sits on a similar cot a couple of yards away, watching him through small, circular glasses.

“What happened?” Tony’s voice is a rasp. Low, grating, and painful against his throat.

“Shrapnel.”

He inhales.

The make and model of the missile is familiar. It hadn’t been sold very long. It did what it was built to do, but the collateral damage was too much even for the younger, fiercer version of himself.

Obadiah had been set against removing the weapon from the line. The first time Tony ever overrode him was when he ceased production and refused to sell the excess. It hadn’t been the last time.

Of course it’s shrapnel.

“The wires—” Tony falters, gesturing at them without touching the insulation. “Care to explain?”

“An electromagnet,” the man says, his face placid. “A clever solution to your problem.”

“How bad?”

The man gives a dry laugh. “You’d be dead in days, if not hours. I did my best, and I am good at what I do, but there were shards that I could not remove.”

The distant, matter-of-fact intonation makes Tony’s blood run cold.

He pulls at the bandaging, and it peels back to reveal a tangled mess of wires and metal. A casing surrounded by puckered, inflamed skin and filled with the gray sheen of puss.

It’s almost enough to make him puke. He chokes back the bile, even though his eyes don’t leave the gunmetal ring buried in his chest.

He’s a dead man walking, only alive because he’s wired to a car battery. Another wave of nausea crashes over him.

And then the terrorists show up.

Of course, they want him to make weapons. New weapons.

He spits on their shoes when they promise his freedom in exchange.

[1991]

Waking up with an ice-pick spike of sunlight in his eye is not Tony’s idea of a good morning. The nausea that follows does not improve things at all. Loud, rattling sounds from the room over, an ache in his back, and the acrid taste in his mouth are the finishing touches on an awful experience.

Apparently, he’d spent the night on the couch. That goes a long way to explaining the throbbing in his head and the backache, and it also promises that, if he’d been blackout enough to sleep here, the after-effects are going to haunt him all day.

Though, at least this time it’s _his_ couch.

He hauls himself into a sitting position, flinching against a wave of dizziness. Between the two of them, the vertigo and the overwhelming scents coming from the kitchen are almost enough to knock him flat on his back again.

Must’ve been a good night. Or at least an improved one.

Tony knows better than to push to his feet, so instead, he takes stock from where he sits. He’s wearing last night’s clothes, but his shoes are gone. His shirt still reeks of beer, but there are no holes in the fabric and no undefined stains, so he clearly spent the night messed up, not _messed up_.

The room is empty; the only signs of company are the click and rattle of cookware and an eye-searing windbreaker draped over the armchair across from the couch. Tony frowns. He could have sworn Rhodey had a black motorcycle jacket. Happy won’t go near anything that day-glo. 

Of course, in light of their mission to get as hammered as humanly possible, he could be missing something. Considering how little he remembers, they were successful.

A hiss and sizzle kicks up in the kitchen, and the scent of meat and grease wafts in with it. It makes his head spin, and he grits his teeth as he stands, ignoring the rush of nausea. 

Hauling himself to the kitchen, he prepares to sharply remind the would-be chef of post-night-out etiquette, only to stop dead in his tracks. 

There is a bodybuilder by the stove.

Grease pops in a non-stick frying pan on the closest burner. A carton of eggs is propped open on the counter nearby. A glass of juice, half-empty, is set out next to it on top of a paper napkin. Managing it all is a six-foot-something blond guy who looks like Schwarzenegger on the cover of _Flex_.

At first, the man doesn’t seem to notice him standing in the doorway, but then Tony sees it. A faint moment of tension in the man’s shoulders. The bruiser knows he’s here, but instead of saying something, he continues tending the pan.

The moment of silence stretches on longer than Tony would like. When the man moves the skillet from the burner, Tony finally finds his words.

“Want to tell me exactly what kind of mistake I made last night?”

He is answered with a sour laugh. “You didn’t. Unless you call drowning your sorrows a mistake.” Two plates rest against the stovetop, and the man deftly tips the pan so that two sunny-side-up eggs slide onto the closest one. “Would’ve done the same, if I could. Certainly tried.”

Eyes narrowing, Tony takes a step forward. He still hasn’t gotten a look at the man’s face, but his voice is distantly familiar.

“Tried.” Tony says it with as flat an intonation as he can, waiting to see if the man takes it for a question.

“I can’t exactly get drunk anymore.” The pan tips again, and the man guides a few strips of bacon onto the plates with the end of a spatula. 

He turns, plates in hand, and Tony is forced to reevaluate his status of lucidity.

The bodybuilder is Captain America. _The_ Captain America. The man his dad wished he had been. 

“I’m guessing they didn’t tell you that I was found.”

“They did not,” Tony says flatly, watching as the man sets two breakfasts on the table, pulls back a chair, and sits down.

A propaganda-poster Captain America is in his kitchen, offering him a plate full of eggs, even though it’s been 40-something years since he crashed a Nazi plane into the North Atlantic.

So he’s on a trip. It’s the only reasonable explanation. Someone must have slipped him a mickey.

He sits down at the table. This fever dream is heading somewhere, and he’s vaguely curious to see what happens. Hopefully he’ll come back to himself before his synapses hit a cascade failure.

The man cuts through his eggs with the side of his fork. He’s not dressed in 40s-era clothes, but in jeans and a t-shirt that already look worn-in. The jacket in the other room must be his.

“Your friend was called back to base. I told him I’d let you know.”

When Tony doesn’t respond, the Captain pales. Like he’s scared.

“And Happy?”

“Basement. He said you wouldn’t mind if he… _crashed_ there.”

Well, that’s not incorrect. Happy usually stays when weather or inebriation force the point.

“So, what, we met up at the bar and happened to run into you?”

“I…arranged it. I wanted to meet with you. Offer my condolences. SHIELD wasn’t too happy to hear that and wouldn’t let me go through the official channels.”

Tony stops.

It’s not common knowledge that his dad was directly involved with SHIELD. Yeah, most people with a decent IQ could guess, but hearing the organization invoked makes his blood run cold.

Tony takes stock of his senses. The heavy, soured taste of morning breath is thick against his tongue. When he reaches up to run a hand over the fabric of his shirt, he can feel the texture of the weave. The rich smell of melted butter and the lingering, fried aura of bacon are still heavy in the air.

His head hurts, but his vision isn’t distorted. The man in front of him is the right size—the size of too freaking big, but proportional to the surrounding kitchen. Everything lines up, even if it doesn’t make sense.

In other words, his tripping theory is officially out the window.

“What, they don’t want you to disappear again?” Tony says.

Rogers coughs and nearly chokes on a bit of egg. After a moment of struggle, he manages to swallow. “I don’t think that’s their issue. I don’t exactly blend in.”

“We’re in California. Bodybuilders are a dime a dozen.”

“A lot has changed since they dug me out of the ice.”

“They found you in the Arctic.” The place where the plane went down. Where Tony’s dad went for months at a time. 

“How long ago?”

“Not long.”

“How long.”

The captain is at least honest enough to look him dead in the eye. “7 weeks ago.”

Before the car accident. “Did my dad know?”

“I don’t know.” The captain sets down his fork. “I didn’t see him before— “

“So he didn’t. You were alive, and he didn’t know.” 

There could have been answers. A resolution. Peace, maybe. Some time where Dad wasn’t driven to distraction by the failures of his expeditions. Time where Tony and his mom wouldn’t have to fight with a dead man for his attention.

Except he’s not dead. They found him in ice like a _woolly mammoth_ , and somehow, he’s still breathing.

“I was comatose when they found me. I came back to consciousness 21 days ago.”

Tony tries to swallow, but his tongue sticks against the roof of his mouth. “My old man was so obsessed with bringing you back that it ate him alive.”

A long moment of silence hangs in the air. The Captain doesn’t stammer for words or fish for some excuse. Instead, he looks confused.

Tony pushes back from the table and stands to begin his search for another freaking drink.

When he’s in the kitchen, opening a bottle of cheap London Dry, he hears two words that make him drop the twist-off cap.

“I’m sorry.”

Gin sloshes out of the cup as Tony pours it with unsteady hands. He fumbles with a two-liter of tonic water as his pulse roars in his ears. 

“I lost a lot when the plane went down, but so did other people. And unlike me, it was never their choice.” 

He spills the water. The sugar in it is sticky against his palm, and the smell of quinine mixes sharply with the odor of the eggs. 

“I can’t regret my decision, but I accept the responsibility, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry your family paid the price for the call I made.”

It’s official. Tony hates him. The guy can’t even _pretend_ to be offended?

Dumping a poorly cut wedge of lime into his glass, Tony reemerges from the kitchen and drops back into his chair. He takes a swig of the drink, stuffs a bite of egg into his face, and glares.

“Get out of my house.” 

Captain Rogers nods, still watching something far off in the distance. He stands, placing a small, paper card on the table, and disappears through the door to the living room. “Call if there’s anything I can do.” 

He leaves the room. There’s swishing sound as the windbreaker is collected, and then the door opens and shuts. 

Tony stares at the plate of eggs in front of him, hoping the burning anger, the hangover, and the knot in his stomach will all go away.

[2007]

It is just past midnight when Natasha slips between two discarded beams and pulls herself through the ragged gap in the concrete. 

The hole beneath the bridge is pitch black, but she doesn’t bother with the flashlight in her kit. It would be easier to navigate with it, true, but the potential risk is too high. She’ll chance a tetanus shot over a bolt to the thigh.

Her eyes slide shut as she navigates the carved-out hollow, letting her other senses take over. The air smells of gasoline. Gasoline, and the sour, earthy tone of long-left rot.

A rumble echoes above her, a tremor that surges through the ground, rattling her bones and rising until it blots out all other sounds. Dust and some fragments of dirt shake loose, falling like faint rain. Then, as quickly as it came, it is gone.

Natasha moves forward as the hollow stills. She keeps low, stepping lightly, lets the concrete and soil under foot absorb as much sound as possible. 

The room is small. The slightest shuffle is reflected back in her direction. As she nears the back, however, there is a new sound. The soft creak of a string being drawn.

“Red.”

“Barton.”

“You going to actually do your job this time?” 

His voice is slow. Slow and slick. A false calm almost as convincing as Captain Rogers’. A new, learned skill.

“I’m not here on a job.”

Another distant roar grows in the distance, suffusing the cave with sound and vibration. 

She freezes. 

When the 18-wheeler passes and silence returns, Barton exhales. “You should have taken that chance.” In the thundering cacophony, he is at a disadvantage. 

“No one’s ordered me to kill you.” She leaves the rest unspoken. After their last encounter, he can fill in the blanks himself.

“Then why bother?”

She re-establishes her footing on the uneven ground. “I want to hire you.”

“I’m not quite that desperate,” he says, but there is a faint scrape. The bow’s cams pivoting on their mounts. Barton deciding not to shoot her.

“You’re living in a hole under a freeway bridge.”

To Barton’s credit, he laughs. “I work for SHIELD when there are no other options. This hole hasn’t caved in yet, so I won’t be teaming up with Big Brother anytime soon.”

“I want to hire you. And last I checked, I’m an employee. Not a manager.”

The gravel crunches as he creeps closer. Natasha forces the tension out of her shoulders. In the dark, she has the upper hand. “What, did someone else stab the Captain? Because I’m not looking to cross Hydra.”

“Eight hours ago, Tony Stark was abducted from a US military base in Afghanistan.”

Clint whistles, low and long. “Didn’t realize they were pulling ops that loud. And I thought he was out of the weapons game. Why was he all the way out there, some idiotic publicity stunt?”

Natasha clenches her jaw for a moment, slowly working it free so she can speak without the tightness in her throat. “He was demoing a new battlefield armor when they captured him. Protective gear.”

Barton isn’t stupid. He’s going to pick up on her automatic defense of Stark. Would know it to be weakness. Natasha does not like being weak; some things are worth more than the cost.

“It wasn’t Hydra. They’re an extremist terrorist cell. They’re calling themselves the Ten Rings.” 

She hears another footstep. “An independent organization?”

“Maybe. The Reich isn’t backing them.” 

It is why they were caught so off-guard. Every group of dissidents or terrorists that they have crossed paths with in the last two years has some form of economic or cultural tie to the sleeper cell embedded in SHIELD’s ranks. Getting information on one subdivision means making inroads into the others. 

The Ten Rings are their own entity. None of their plans have come to light in the proverbial surgery to separate Fury’s loyalists from the many-headed dragon. When the report came in, it reached Coulson at the same time as Rhodes’ panicked phone call.

By then, Stark’s captors had a 3-hour lead.

“So this is a possible rescue mission.” 

“Yes.” 

“And it’s off-books.” His voice is sharp, with a tone just shy of interest.

“Correct.” 

“...You’re not authorized to be here.” Natasha can hear him grinning in the dark.

“Not by SHIELD.” 

“By the Captain.” There is a scraping and a shift in the air as Barton lowers himself to the ground. 

She mirrors him and sits down, gloved hand braced to balance against the concrete and dirt. “So you won’t be going in under SHIELD’s banner?”

“No. We’re going in with unmarked gear.” 

The aggressive reprimand that they are likely to receive doesn’t need to be made worse by implicating the organization in their improvised mission. Though, now is arguably the best time to run an unlicensed operation. Fury’s forces are so short on trustworthy agents that any crackdown on their actions likely won’t include expulsion. 

Not that it matters to Captain America. Which means that, by extension, it does not matter to her either.

“Hope he’s just as bulletproof without vibranium shields. Don’t need the front line falling before I can get a few shots off.”

The sensation of being watched is distinct. It crawls along her skin, the residual skill of an instinct honed to a razor’s edge.

In the darkness, she can feel his focus. It is wary, but nothing about it ripples with the hungry energy of a hunter. 

No. Between the faint pull in his voice and the keen but careful focus, it is clear. Curiosity. Barton sees the messy tangle of questions and needs to pick it apart for his own satisfaction.

“So you’re in?”

He hums low, in mock consideration. “As painful as it is to check out of this four-star hotel, I guess I might be able to lend a hand. Besides, Stark brand hearing aids are the best on the market. He can’t improve them if he’s dead.”

When Natasha lets the wave of relief sweep over her, she doesn’t bother masking it. A moment of weakness, a moment of thanks. 

Even wild things know of gratitude and debts.

[1991]

Tony wants a drink. He wants a drink, and he wants answers. That, and he wants to punch Steve Rogers in his perfect teeth.

Dum-E’s distant whirring isn’t enough to keep Tony distracted, even paired with a page of scratch paper calculations and a new diagram that he’s supposed to be completing. The soldering iron and circuit board to his left aren’t either.

Rage burns in his gut. The work is pointless in comparison to the file laid out on the table, but he’s already combed through the report a half dozen times, and the evidence photos never get any easier to stomach.

SHIELD won’t let him leave the confines of his house, so the lab projects are the only distraction left.

He exhales through his nose, sets down his pencil, and reaches for the soldering iron. The first few dots of solder are clean. Wires attach seamlessly to the board.

Then the numbers jump back into his head. The measurements for the indentations on his dad’s face. The precise, calculated distance between the fractures on his skull.

The next connection point is sloppy. The solder piles up higher than necessary, and Tony bites back a curse before unwinding the filament to place a small drop on the next node. A tremor runs through his hands.

Checking Rogers’ wild claims hasn’t put them to rest.

In the last forty-eight hours, Tony has cross-referenced every forensic and medical journal in print, but the results are undeniable. Nothing in the car could have left dents like that in flesh and bone.

The official autopsy report claims that his father died on impact. The ribbing on the steering wheel is set too close together and the angle is too flat for it to leave wounds like that. It wasn’t the crash that killed him.

In the photos, five purpling bruises stripe across his mother’s throat. Perfectly spaced, interrupted only by a faint line where the seatbelt caught her neck. It’s a pattern diagrammed in every forensics textbook; the tell-tale print of metacarpals and phalanges tightening against the trachea.

She was strangled.

Rogers must have gone over the photos multiple times. The writeup he’s added to the file is excruciatingly detailed. It’s convincing, the way he proposes that the original conclusion is faulty.

Tony hates Rogers. Hates him, but recognizes sound analysis when he sees it. It would be easier to admit if the man wasn’t standing on the other side of the workshop with a furrowed brow and wet eyes.

“You don’t get to be upset about this. This is on you, because you weren’t here,” Tony snaps.

A nagging whisper in the back of Tony’s brain reminds him that his family’s wealth would make them enough of a target as-is, that this might have happened anyway, but the fact of the matter is that there were vials of Rogers’ steroid-laden blood in the trunk of that wrecked car. Vials that were gone when the car was searched.

Rogers doesn’t flinch in response, just averts his gaze and continues to stand silently by the door.

“I don’t care what SHIELD’s orders are. I told you to get out of my house.”

“You’re right,” he says. “I wasn’t here, and I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.”

The silence lasts for half an hour. Two. He weighs, for a moment, the potential cost of turning on the stereo and blasting AC/DC as loud as the speakers will allow. It might be effective in driving Rogers from the violated sanctuary of the shop.

He jams the soldering iron into the spiral holder and pushes back, letting the circuit board clatter against the tabletop. When he turns, Rogers is gazing with rapt attention at Dum-E, watching the little robot click and whirr between the two workstations.

“Not polite to stare,” he says, and doesn’t bother to check his sneer.

“I’ve…never seen a machine like— _him_ before.” He fumbles over the personification, but doesn’t call the bot an it. The effort means that, this entire time, Rogers has been paying attention. Listening.

The workshop is a safe place. His presence feels like an invasion.

“Well get used to it, because he’s the world my dad has been building.”

“Did he build him?”

Tony wants to scoff. “No. Dad wouldn’t have been caught dead developing something like him.” A hydraulic-arm assistant for the workshop isn’t big enough. Broad enough. It isn’t revolutionary or world-changing, no matter how complicated the software or internal mechanisms.

They lapse into quiet again, but when Tony looks up from the boards, Rogers is studying him, not the bot.

It makes his skin crawl. The sensation of being analyzed, of someone trying to find a weakness.

His dad used to do that. Tear someone apart with his eyes, find every weak point, every strength they lacked.

No wonder he liked Rogers. They’re both the same.

“He’s amazing. How does he work?”

A curse slips from Tony’s mouth as his finger skims close to drying solder. He’s lucky it’s a patch that’s been hardening, not one still hot enough to leave second degree burns. He holsters the iron and heads for the sink against the back wall. Only when cool water is running across the inflamed skin does he scrutinize Rogers for any sign of sarcasm.

Tony doesn’t find any. Granted, Rogers is an actor. He could be as adept at masking what he thinks as dear, old Dad.

Instead of answering, he dries his hands and moves back to the boards. The tip of the iron trembles as he holds it up to the solder filament.

The man is still watching him. He can feel it.

When the iron dabs at the board, the trail left behind is as shaky as his hands. Nothing will get done, at this pace.

Tony inhales through his nose, and exhales through his mouth. “Are your hands steady?”

“Steady enough.” Rogers pushes off of the wall, but doesn’t come any closer.

“…Well then make yourself useful.” He stands and gestures with the iron. “My explanations aren’t free.”

The captain’s face flickers with the barest hint of surprise, but he complies instead of firing off a snide comment in response. 

“Right,” he says, giving Tony his full attention. “Show me?”

[2007]

The plane shudders as they hit a patch of turbulence. Empty jump seats rattle in their frames. Clint leans back against the hull, letting the shaking slip into his bones.

The other passengers are too quiet and too still.

Noise. Movement. They’re tools. Ways to speak without using words.

Without those, the Captain and Red are impossible to read.

They sit across from him in the aircraft, next to one another. The captain leans slightly in her direction, just shy of resting against her shoulder. Red has her feet braced on the seat’s webbing, bringing her knees up to her chin. She doesn’t shift any closer, but she also doesn’t push the man away.

Both gaze in his direction, but their eyes are glossy. Clouded, like they don’t even see him. He grits his teeth.

Something’s off. There’s more to this. Something that Red didn’t disclose when she presented the verbal contract.  
Clint taps his fingers against his knee and runs through his options. They’re rescuing Stark. That much, he figures, is true. But why?

Either Stark knows something or has something. Something Cap’s little strike force doesn’t want a terrorist group to have. But then, why leave SHIELD out of the operation?

Clint clears his throat. “So what’s Stark got?”

Red blinks, and Rogers moves back so she can stretch out and straighten her shoulders.

“You misunderstand,” Rogers says, and Red cuts in.  
  
“An attitude. And a mouth. And distaste for authority.”

Interesting. He slouches forward to get a better read on their lips over the clank of the metal. “So you think that he’ll die before the military can get there.”

The way the captain pales is enough to be its own answer. It takes Red a moment to look him in the eye. “Stark is a genius. He’s also a moron.”

“I know the type.” Annoying, but useful if they let their pride get the best of them. “What does he know that’s worth a rescue mission without SHIELD oversight?” 

He leans back, folding his hands behind his head. Trying to look relaxed, loose. Like he doesn’t really care if they answer him or not. “Is it dirt on you, Cap?”

“I’ve known Tony for years, Barton. It’s not about what he knows.”   
Clint hums in response. Fine. If they don’t want to share the details, that’s their business. As long as he gets out alive and with cash, he’ll be satisfied.

“ETA in 1 hour. Gear up.” Coulson, the agent that stole his hearing aids back at the SHIELD facility, calls back to them from the cockpit. The captain takes that as his cue to join the agent at the pilots’ controls.

Red springs to her feet, rocking with the shake of the plane. She heads for the small stack of cargo belted to the floor and returns a moment later with two black cases, both about two feet by two feet. Settling back into her seat, she holds one out to him.

“You’ll want this.”

Clint takes it. A reflection on the side catches his eye. The case, made of some kind of injection-molded plastic, has a raised label on the side that reads: “For Robin Hood.” 

He snorts, then pops the clasps on the side. A gorgeous bow rests against the velvet interior. It’s a sleek, glossy black, except for the riser, which is machined in an intricate pattern. It folds, like his, but the cams are heavier, and judging from the way it lies collapsed in the box, it’s bigger. Designed for a longer range, with a heavy draw weight.

He picks it up, turns it over carefully. It’s lighter in his hands than any compound he’s ever used. 

There are no manufacturer’s marks. The design doesn’t resemble any of the brands on the market.

“Where’d you get _this_ ,” Clint asks as he reaches for one of several bowstrings in the bottom of the case. Whoever packed them knew their stuff. Each is carefully coiled to prevent the string from loosening or coming unwound. 

“Let’s just say you made an impression on Stark.” 

He releases the mechanism to let the limbs spring free and starts to string the bow, weaving the first of three cords carefully through the cam apparatus. “Never met him.”

“No,” Red agrees. “But he loves any story with a Coulson screw-up.”

She pauses. Wants him to laugh. So he does, then reaches for the second string.

“That, and I’m pretty sure he couldn’t stop after making the hearing aids.”

 _That_ makes Clint look up. The plane shudders again. A wilder burst of turbulence that forces Red to grab for the closest rail. He tightens his grip on the bow as its plastic case falls, scraping across the grating on the floor.   
  
When the shaking settles, she pushes the second case into the seat next to him and stalks over to retrieve its match. “That one’s yours too.”

“Is it Christmas?” he asks dryly once he’s taken the bow case back and the final string is secure.

“No. Christmas with Stark involves a lot more alcohol and gag gifts.”

The bow collapses easily while strung. There’s a mechanism along the side of each cam that gradually guides the strings into a new position so that the motion doesn’t damage them. It slides into place against the velvet interior, ready for use. 

“And you know that from personal experience?” 

There is a jacket in the second case. He pulls it out. The fabric is heavy, like several layers of Kevlar, but it’s too slim and flexible to be a bulletproof vest.

“I’ve known Stark for half my life. I’d prefer to know him longer than that.”

Clint looks down at the jacket, then meets her gaze.  
  
“Prototype body armor. Should stop anything shy of a .50 Desert Eagle” She tugs at her sleeve, and the material folds in the same way as the body-armor jacket.

“Stark too?” Clint pulls the jacket on.

“I did say he likes gag gifts, didn’t I?” 

He raises an eyebrow. “This is a gag?”

She smiles, and there’s no venom or ice behind it. For a moment, just like the time by the underpass, she chooses to let him see it. 

“It is when he invents it after Coulson gets himself shot.” 

Oh. 

Red likes Stark. Genuinely likes him. Rogers, too. 

This is personal.

Well, a job’s a job. As long as he gets paid, they can be driven by whatever spite or anger they like.

“Think Stark’ll buy us some booze when we get back?” Clint asks, zipping the jacket up to his neck.

Red snorts. “Try stopping him.”

—

When the terrorists visit a second time, Tony contemplates telling them exactly where they can stick their new weapons. He contemplates it, but a flash of fear sweeps across the face of the man with the bottle glasses, and that stops the words cold just as they curl on his tongue. 

He’s seen that look on the little spider’s face one too many times, back when she still expected Steve to backhand her for speaking out of turn.

Honestly, that silence is probably for the best. The most practical course of action is to stall.

His abduction will not be quietly covered up. None of the weapons used during the attack are large enough to wipe a corpse out completely, and the road is open enough to the sky that satellites overhead are bound to have gotten some images. When people are sent to investigate, they’ll know his body isn’t among the dead.

The news will get back to the States. As soon as it does, Coulson will have the intel. 

They’ll find him. SHIELD might not like it, now that the organization is struggling to pull Hydra out at the root, but it doesn’t really matter what the organization thinks.

Tony can’t dream of measuring up to Bucky Barnes, but if Steve will cross enemy lines and storm a Nazi base to rescue a friend, a ragtag camp of terrorists is nothing.

Help will come. All they need is time.

So Tony takes a breath and remembers Nat. How she pokes, and prods, and leads, becomes exactly what the target expects. They always pay for underestimating her.

A tremor shoots through his fingers as they close around the plastic corners of the car battery, and Tony doesn’t fight it. His eyes linger on the worn but well-kept firearms slung over each man’s shoulder. The shallow, painful breaths that he has to take around the metal in his chest are a blessing in disguise. They add to the image of fear.

He can’t agree to their demands. Not right away. It would fall flat if he did, interpreted with suspicion instead of satisfaction.

First, the terrorists will make a show of force, followed by a show of violence. After, his cooperation will be demanded a second time. They’ll expect panic. For him to be broken. 

Then, his acquiescence will be believed.

So he stammers out a refusal as his heart pounds out a painful rhythm in his chest and steels himself.

Only hours later, when he’s settled on the cot, coughing up water and nursing small electricity burns on his arms, does he learn the man’s name. Ho Yinsen is a doctor. The legitimate kind. Not like the hyped-up Hydra flunkies that think cruelty becomes science when it is recorded.

He is also a prisoner in more ways than one.

“It’s in the eyes,” Coulson had told him once. “The trapped, the hopeless. They all have the same eyes. Clouded. Distant.” 

This man is lost to the milky haze, even though his lip quirks in wry amusement as Tony examines the soldering job that connects the electromagnet to the almighty car battery. 

“What,” Tony says. “No duct tape?”

“Did they hit your head?” Yinsen’s voice lilts up more than a question should. “It is already taped.” Despite the hollowly joking tone, he stands and makes his way to Tony’s side.

Tony is stretched out on the cot, trying not to wince as another wave of coughing overtakes him. “With _electrician’s_ tape,” he says when it settles, “which is good, but there’s no duct tape over it. That stuff’s indestructible. Fixes anything.”

Yinsen lets out an empty laugh. “You are one of the richest men on Earth. Why would you fix what can be replaced?”

“Just because something’s old or outdated doesn’t mean it’s useless. Just look at Captain America.” 

The doctor’s crow’s feet deepen in a faint sign of amusement, but his eyes are still glossed over with gray. “As someone quite past my time, I would have to agree.”

Tony could leave it there, unexplained and unspoken, but then the man’s void expression, thinly covered with a veneer of humor, will go unchallenged. “Good thing for us, because there are people back home trying to figure out where I am. Which means all we need to do is stall for time.”

Plotting with Yinsen is a risk—one Coulson would chastise Tony for taking, because after the Hydra scare, anyone could be a double-agent or backstabber—but the man doesn’t move with the same aggression and purpose as the terrorists. He is deliberate and calm, like Nat is with that archer-assassin that she wants to tame, but Yinsen looks like he could really use some hope, and Tony needs someone with a steady pair of hands.

Instead of taking the comment with shock, surprise, or doubt, the man just laughs again. “You may have powerful allies, but we’re out of reach. A sad truth.”

“My friends make Navy SEALS look like puppies. All I have to do is wait.” They’ll be here, come hell or high water.

Yinsen doesn’t believe him, given the pinched furrow in his brow, but Tony’s convictions are, at least, believable enough to ask one key question. “And how do you intend on making sure you’re alive if they do?” 

That’s something that Tony can answer. Smirking, he shuffles the battery wires and pulls himself upright. “They want a weapon. I’ll build one.”

—

When the shouting starts, Tony jerks. The pliers in his hand sink into the cable he’s trying to strip, cutting clean through the copper wiring and destroying the line. 

With a curse, he tosses the cable aside. They’ll have to break down another handful of land mines to get more of this size. Neither of them are eager to risk blowing off a limb working the charges free.

He stands, rubs his hands on his grease-stained pants, and is halfway to the pile of abandoned weaponry that they’ve been given to use for scrap when he sees that Yinsen is frozen, the screwdriver dangling precariously from loose fingers.

Their captors aren’t just having a fight.

He grabs for the pliers, strips the end of the severed cable anyway, then cuts it back so that the ends are even. They can afford a shorter cable, a messier wiring if—

“What are they saying?” Tony demands, keying a handful of commands into the dated laptop.

Yinsen sets the screwdriver down and exhales. “They believe someone has breached the camp.”

“That means we’re on deck. Hand me that board.”

Yinsen pins the circuit board in place as Tony slides a connector over the metal ring in his chest. The final cable is tucked into place by the board, then attached with a wad of electrical tape.

As Tony slips an arm into the metal casing and hits a button for the boot sequence, the other man frowns. “Do any of your friends use a bow and arrow?”

The green progress bar on the laptop screen fills. Code compiled, the gauntlet hums to life.

With a grin, Tony flexes his fingers. The sensor on the gauntlet’s palm flares white with the arc reactor’s energy. 

“Come on. Our ride is here.”

—

They make the jump at dusk, landing by a collection of dunes a few miles out from the camp. Coulson’s timing is right on the money. The Ten Rings guys don’t see the parachutes on the way down. If they had, he and Captain America’s Merry Band would be up to their ears in spent cartridges and lead.

It’s the best sort of start they can ask for. Which means that something will inevitably go pear-shaped, but at least the situation isn’t FUBAR before they’ve even reached the camp.

Rogers catches his attention with a quick gesture of his hand, then segues into a rapid set of flashing signs. Not ASL, but decently recognizable nonetheless. Clint lifts a fist to shoulder height and taps out a quick “YES” in response. The three slip from the cover of the dunes and into the night.

The trek across the no-man’s-land isn’t long, but Stark’s bulletproof jacket still proves to be worth its weight in cold, hard cash. As soon as the sun is settled beyond the horizon, the temperature drops. Clint has to keep his draw hand tucked into the pocket of the jacket to keep his fingers from icing.

As they approach the camp, he stops in his tracks and holds his palm up for the others to do the same. There are three silhouettes at different points on the perimeter. He counts the number off on his fingers to the other two. Then, he drags a thumb across his neck and tips his head in an inaudible question.

Rogers nods. Clint sets an arrow on string. Exhales. Releases.

There’s a moment’s pause before the sentry farthest from them collapses. Red lifts an eyebrow, but gives him a hint of a smile.

Cap waits for the shouting to start before signaling them to move.

The camp is set along an outcropping. The satellite photos Coulson was able to secure prior to the mission—the man might be an idiot, but he’s efficient—showed a small series of ramshackle shelters clustered around a mass of rock that rises from the sand. The constructions are flimsy. Not good for much more than keeping off the sun.

Which means that they’re living somewhere else. That the real camp is hidden underground. That Stark, if he’s still alive after a week and a half of recruitment and preparation, is down there too.

Red takes point as they slip easily past the remaining guards, who have abandoned their posts to gawk at the feathers growing from their buddy’s skull.

Rogers offers him a hand as they scramble up over a stone ridge that protrudes from the sand. Clint shakes his head slightly as he takes it. Unbelievable. He’d been trying to cut the guy open the last time they met.

Crossing the stone is like crossing a dividing line. Once they’re up and over, the camp unfolds in front of them. Between a series of smaller stone ridges sit clusters of tethered canopies, ragged-looking tents, and an obscene number of unopened crates. Crates that have familiar logos stenciled on the sides.

Hammer Industries. Stark’s company. Even that Idea Mechanics think-tank the government was funding.

The terrorists are sitting on a cache large enough to supply an army.

Clint turns so that his face is in the path of the dim moonlight so they can see his face. “If they have the bodies they need to use these, we’re screwed,” he mouths.

“Let’s hope they don’t,” Red responds voicelessly.

“They don’t. Too few people coming in and out.” Rogers runs a hand through his hair, like a distracted, old professor, and focuses in on the nearest collection of crates to scan the numbers and codes painted on in black. “These are old. The Stark Industries weapons, at least. Tony doesn’t make them anymore.”

Yeah, right. His employers are more buddy-buddy with Stark than the media leads people to believe, but everyone knows that a Stark wouldn’t give up the gravy train of weapons money that easily. Probably working under the table, or with a shell company of a shell company to cover up the money trail.

Red moves noiselessly, despite the shifting sand underfoot. Taking a half-step closer, she sets a finger to her lips. Rogers goes stock still. It takes a moment for Clint’s hearing aids to catch and magnify the sound, but the muted step of boots on sand is fast approaching.

He starts to reach over his shoulder for another arrow, but Red stays his hand with a quick shake of her head and the sudden draw of a knife. They wait, barely breathing, and then the knife is no longer in Red’s hands. A yard away from them, a man with a rifle slung across his back collapses face-first. The ground around his head grows dark.

Clint averts his gaze as the woman retrieves her blade from the man’s throat. It’s not a new sight, not in his profession, but he doesn’t stare. Death doesn’t bring joy. Just dollars.

They don’t encounter anyone else on the path toward the rocky outcropping. They do, however, hear shouting. He’s familiar enough with languages to know they’re using more than one, but he speaks exactly none of them.

The chaos is distant at first, implying that they’re still searching the fringes of the camp. Good. Leaves them more time to scout before the operation is blown.

Because, of course, it will be. Red and the Captain act like they’re optimistic about the odds of escaping unseen, but they all know better. Everything will eventually go up in flames. The trick is getting Stark out before it does.

Keeping the rock outcropping on their right, they push further in, tracing the stone until the distance between stacked piles of crates and improvised shelters grows smaller. If the main living quarters of the Ten Rings are underground like Rogers and Coulson are guessing, the rock is the only place stable enough to support a reliable entrance. The density of supplies is a sign that they’re close.

Unfortunately, so are the calls and warnings between the enemy.

“Can you hit the boxes where she—” Rogers flicks his thumb across his neck, imitating Clint’s earlier motion, “with an explosive?”

“Can I?” he mouths back, pulling an incendiary arrow from the quiver. “Call it.”

Rogers is quick on the draw. Clint respects it. The plan isn’t complicated. Clint respects that even more. A small explosion. A quick distraction.

Plastic veins touch his cheek. He calculates the distance of the required arc in the faint, chill breeze. Adjusts his stance as Rogers raises a hand. His breath slows. He counts against his pulse, willing it to drop to a crawl.

Rogers’ arm falls. The arrow flies.

Clint waits, lowers his bow. The explosion rings out. Then, as the shouting picks up again, a gout of flame shoots into the sky, followed by a rumble that rattles against his ribs.

His arrows are good, but they’re not that good. 

“Crate was full of small firebombs. Recognized the first part of the serial number.” Because of course Captain America has Stark Industries serial code conventions memorized.

Clint turns and keeps following the rock wall to the right.

The cave entrance is big, big enough for Rogers to stand in it comfortably, arms outstretched, without hitting the sides. The sand and dirt has been packed down into a solid path that slopes upward toward the entrance, making it marginally more difficult to approach from the sides.

A handful of armed guards are stationed out front. A couple of them pace back and forth, guns in hand. The ones that stand at their posts seem nervous. Twitchy.

Good.

His arrow finds its mark at the same time as Rogers’ fist. One of the pacers tumbles over, and another slumps back against the rock face before slipping to the ground.

Two down. Three up and angry.

Red darts past, and sparks fly from her wrist. There’s a cry of pain. A third man jerks and writhes before collapsing in a heap.

Even if his company claims that weapons are off the table, Clint’d bet his pay that taser was one of Stark’s.

There’s a low grunt to his left. The bow swings out, the limbs colliding with bone. Clint pivots, kicks, catching the man in the ribs with his heel. Rogers finishes him off with a haymaker that would make any boxer jealous.

He’s got to be careful. Any more shots like that, and he might end up actually being impressed. Fourth man down. One left.

Red back-kicks him in the head before Clint can draw his bow. Okay, maybe he’s a little impressed.

He falls into place in the shadows under the cave mouth. The captain settles next to him, exhaling sharply through his nose. There’s a hand pressed to his ribs.

Even in the low light, he can see the scattered, darker patches where blood is seeping through his dark body armor. The cuts are from a blade, not a bullet. something that could actually sink into the bulletproof fabric at close range. When had he—

Rogers had been on his left flank when he struck out with the side of the bow. He’d caught the knife before Clint made contact. Shielded him from it.

Clint is fully capable of fighting with a cut in his side. They’re familiar enough with his resumé to understand that. The wound is a tactical error on the captain’s part. Even if every story Clint’s heard about him makes it clear that the captain doesn’t make tactical errors.

Red shoots Rogers a look and gets a quick smile in response. The man keeps his palm pressed to his side for a moment, then gingerly pulls away. The wounds are still there, but the blood is starting to coagulate, and the ripped fabric catches the worst of the oozing.

“Go,” Clint mouths, tugging a fistful of flat-head arrows from his quiver. He jams most of them into the ground at his feet, then nocks the other two. This part of the mission is all his.

Satellite imagery can’t map the caves below. They have no way of knowing if there’s a second way out. Once the guys down there start shooting, every warm body in the camp will converge on the entrance. 

It’s a good thing he’s a quick shot.

About three minutes after Rogers and Red vanish into the cave, the first wave appears on the other side of the trail. Two go down. Three. A tight cluster of five fall to the shock of an explosive arrow.

One of the remainder gets his gun aimed in approximately the right direction, the muzzle flashing in the dark, but the bullets scatter to Clint’s left. There’s another round of shouts as an arrow thuds into the barrel and the weapon clicks dully. Its wielder shrieks, claws at the new blood on his face.

The second round arrives before Clint is finished clearing out the first. He loads another incendiary arrow and draws, waiting for them to group up, but they’ve figured that trick out and run at him alone or in pairs. He lets it fly anyway, taking out two and tripping a third a couple of yards behind.

Pulling three arrows from the dirt, he sets them all against the string. At this pace and ammunition expenditure, he’s guessing another five, six minutes before the enemy overwhelms him with numbers. 

He can’t cut and run. If he doesn’t come back with at least one of the other two, there’s no way Coulson will let him board the plane back to the states.

He’s up to a kill-count of 15 and an injury count of 3 or 4 when arrows start to run thin. There are two incendiaries and five piercing heads left, and he counts at least another score of targets homing in on the cave.

Every snap of the bowstring counts. One of the piercing arrows slips through its mark, then sinks into the man behind him. Clint gets a careless group of four with one of the explosives, and sets fire to the nearest stack of crates with the last one.

The blaze forces the enemy to either bottleneck on the path or climb the exposed sand on either side. If they don’t manage to clip him through the body armor on the way, he’s got a chance at taking them hand to hand.

Final arrow readied, Clint tenses, ready to move as soon as the shaft flies free.

As he lets go, a buzzing whine blares against his eardrum. The shot goes wide. The arrow disappears into the sand. A blinding, white light flares at his side as the frontman of the horde is thrown back into his closest follower.

The air pressure changes, and Clint can feel it in his ribs. He tightens his grip on the bow, turns to lash out—

Rogers catches the limb of the bow in one hand and holds it steady, motioning with the other for Red to cut around him and draw her gun.

“What took you so long?” Clint asks dryly, taking a step back to tug the weapon free and let her have a clean shot.

“Yeah, what took you so long, Cap?” Stark stands on the other side of the captain. His face is covered in grime, and his arm is outstretched. It’s covered in a silver-plated glove, and there are identical white lights glowing on the palm of his hand and underneath his dirty shirt. His voice is raw but full of a sarcasm that Clint can respect.

“Had to wait for Phil to find a loophole and we were a man down. Needed to hire someone,” Rogers says, shifting to cover a man with round glasses who’s just as covered in dust and grease as Stark.

There’s another ear-splitting whine, and the lights on Stark’s palm and chest dim, then brighten again. The shockwave echoes out, the new leader staggers back, and Red pulls the trigger twice, stopping him permanently.

“Good to meet you in person, Legolas. Have to say, I think I’m a fan.”

“Feeling’s mutual, as long as your audio gear is this good. Think I’m gonna need another pair after all this.”

“Coulson’s three klicks out,” Red cuts in. “Want to cause some damage and make a run for it?”

With a hoarse laugh, Stark fires the gauntlet weapon again. “Thought you’d never ask, little spider.”

[2007]

Clint is packing the utilitarian backpack with unmarked, non-sequential bills when Red—Natasha—approaches. Her heels click against the wooden floor as she walks. Deliberately alerting him to her presence, making sure he won’t startle.

“Heading out?”

“I’m not exactly a part of the reunion,” he says, stuffing the last stack of bills into the bag.

It’s bad enough to be in one of Stark’s houses, sorting through laundered money in the living room between the open-air waterfall and the indoor fire pit. Sitting through some kind of homecoming is not his idea of fun.

“Part of the rescue, though.” She leans against the couch, close to where he’s hunched at the coffee table. Her weight is unbalanced; it would take a second to push off and up, a precious second that would cost her the win in a fight.

She’s trying to prove that she won’t jump him when he turns to leave.

After what he saw on the ground in Afghanistan, Clint thinks he might believe her.

“What do you want?” Because she has to want something. Otherwise, she’d be downstairs with her captain, Agent Killjoy, Stark and his posse, and the doctor they’d pulled from the cave.

“You satisfied with your haul?”

He slowly fastens the last closure on the backpack. Where’s she going with this?

“The hearing aids are pretty good.” They’re the newest model, a prototype, courtesy of Stark himself. They’re definitely better than good.

“So you’re not looking to increase your nest egg.”

Clint tips his chin forward. “Money makes the world go ‘round, Red,” he says, scooping up the bag that’s now heavy with cash.

“So you’d consider another job.”

Is that what this is about? There has to be more to it. He doesn’t answer, just watches. She’ll give something away—has to give something away—in the way she moves.

Except she doesn’t. Her body language stays open. Arms back, shoulders relaxed, a mildly interested expression on her face.

“Depends on what it is.”

Only then does Natasha let something show. A flicker of fury mixed with satisfaction. “We’re paying a certain town a visit. Cleaning out some more members of the Ten Rings.”

Oh. A grudge match. That, Clint understands. “The doctor’s town. You want to wipe out their foothold.”

“Exactly.”

“And your terms would be the same this time?”

“Of course.”

He pauses for a moment. Easy money. Solid backup. People that are more likely to stop a knife than slip it between his ribs.

Maybe he can stomach sitting through a reunion after all.

“In that case,” he says, setting the backpack down on the couch, “you’ve got a deal, boss.”

—

When Tony comes back, he keeps his hands busy. Fingers thread wire along the edges of delicate boards. An iron taps faintly at a whisker of solder. Even when he’s speaking to the company or the press, there’s a pen clutched tightly in his grip.

Steve isn’t surprised by it, but it leaves a weight on his shoulders every time he sees a wrench or a scrap of paper or a knickknack braced against Tony’s palm. It’s a symptom Steve has seen before. For a while, he carried around a notepad and paper in public to keep his hands from shaking too.

Tony’s been using it as an excuse. An excuse to spend more time in the workshop of his ostentatious Miami house. It’s away. Isolated, with beautiful landscapes in every direction. The perfect place to hide from the memory of sand, the blistering, dry heat of the day, and the freezing temperatures of the desert night.

That, and in the workshop, even those that know him best won’t see him sitting still.

“JARVIS,” Steve says aloud, hesitating at the top of the staircase.

“Greetings, Captain. How can I be of assistance?”

The voice that speaks from the ceiling still feels like something out of Astounding Science Fiction.

“Just Steve is fine. Can you let Tony know I’m coming down? I don’t want to startle him.”

“Of course, Captain. Initiating the Wakeup Protocol.”

He rolls his eyes with a faint shake of his head, taking the stairs at a slow pace, giving the protocol a few minutes to play out before appearing by the glass walls of the lab. When he finally arrives at the entrance, Tony isn’t looking up, but the low tone of a rising alarm is audible through the paneling.

Steve taps his personal code into the keypad. It chimes a moment later, opening to let him through.

“No inspirational speeches,” Tony says the moment Steve is over the threshold. “No pep talks, no encouragement. No nothing. I mean it.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

Steve weaves around the piles of electronic scrap and dodges the Bots, who whirr quietly as he passes, to lean against the worktable. The hologram interface is on, but no image is displayed, as if whatever was there has been quickly dismissed.

“Gee, thanks. I thought we were friends.” There’s a comfortable acid to the retort, and it’s reassuring even though Steve can still hear a genuine note of hurt underneath it.

“It wouldn’t help.”

Tony scoffs, his screwdriver pressed against the small tangle of metals and wire in his hands. “Great. Good to know that my tendency toward self-loathing is too realistic to be swayed by a brilliant, rallying speech.”

The screwdriver rattles against the framework of the device, a drumbeat tapping out an unsteady tempo. He sets the knot of cables down. A hand swipes through his hair, and he doesn’t look up. Doesn’t look Steve in the eye.

“No. I mean that platitudes won’t help that. Trust me, I know.”

Tony snorts derisively. “Yeah right. Nat’s not wrong. You are too perfect.”

“I mean it.”

The man ignores him to scoop up the bundle and click some larger pieces of metal in along the sides, plating it. He examines it, then slips it over his arm. It clicks into place, a sleek gauntlet perfectly fitted to his forearm. A tiny panel in the external case slides open as Tony closes his bare fist.

“Oh, really? Name one time.”

Steve sucks in a breath. “After the train. I was useless on the field. Falsworth had to pull me out of the fire.”

The first battle the Commandos faced without their sniper, Steve’s hands shook so badly that he couldn’t throw the shield to take out an enemy gunner. His face burned cold as Falsworth tackled him into the snow.

Tony stops in the middle of adjusting another screw.

“I’m lucky,” Steve says, wincing when his voice comes out as a rasp instead of the whisper he’s expecting.

“Oh, really?”

“The serum speeds up the process of forming new synapses.”

After catching up with the research, he knows that what they used to call shell shock is considered a medical condition now, filed under another name and diagnosis. It isn’t a sign of weakness, but a pattern trauma carves into the brain to ensure survival.

His mind regenerates at the same speed as his body. Which is to say, faster than most.

Their next mission, he was pinned down, and the option was to throw the shield or let Dugan die. And Steve was not going to allow another loss so soon.

The next day, his hands were still.

Many of his compatriots weren’t so lucky. Some got sent home because of it. Others never got the chance to go back.

“Oh sure. You cheat, and then say you understand.”

The comment is sharp but all bark. The way he shoots a nervous look at Steve a half-second later confirms it.

“I’m not here to try and play counselor or cheerleader, and I’m not going to tell you what I think you need.” Steve sinks, so that he’s leaning heavily against the table, resting his chin on his arms.

Quiet falls again, and Tony continues calibrating the gauntlet. Once he’s run through another sequence, he looks up again. “Then what are you here for, Cap?”

He straightens, reaching over the table and a pile of bundled wires, and deftly pulls the heated soldering iron from its stand.

“It’s not obvious?” he says with a half-smile. “I’m here to work.”

[2008]

“Okay, how we looking, JARVIS?” Tony asks as the repulsor’s whine rises in pitch.

“We are approaching the upper threshold without the power fluctuations present in the last test, sir.”

He braces himself, digging in his heels as the generator node in the palm of the gauntlet grows brighter. “Hold it steady. I want to know when it hits its peak.”

A small graphic appears on the helmet’s heads-up display, a rising bar that mimics the spike in energy that the suit is channeling. It climbs steadily, then jumps. He has only a second to reach out, fingers drawn back, before the burst of light shoots from his hand and the force of it throws him backward.

Metal rings as he and the armor collide bodily with the warehouse wall. 

Tony groans. It’s gonna bruise, even through the plating, and the scraping noise that issues from the elbow joint as he picks himself up suggests that one of the mechanisms in the arm has been jostled loose. It’s going to be a pain to fix.

“That better have been worth it,” he mutters. “Did we get the numbers?”

The display flickers for a moment before JARVIS’s updated graph manifests. “Repulsor power is emitting at the desired levels without wavelength fluctuations. However, sir, I might recommend applying the algorithm you developed to focus reactor output.”

“Focus the beam so that it doesn’t kick me into next week. Got it.”

His eyes swipe across the screen, and the gaze-tracking system traces the gestural control to raise the helmet’s faceplate. An ear-splitting whistle cuts through the air.

Rolling his eyes, he turns to see Nat and Steve watching from the far side of the room. Steve’s got two fingers in his mouth, whistling like he’s hailing a cab, and Natasha claps like she’s at the US Golf Open.

“You guys suck,” he says, flexing his shoulders slowly to check that the panels along his back are still properly aligned.

“That was spectacular,” Nat drawls, her lip quirked.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.”

“It was pretty incredible, Tony, and the repulsor was swell too.” Steve grins as he weaves around the cables and workstation to meet him on the testing floor.

“You’re both traitors, you know that? JARVIS is the only one I can trust around here.”

The warehouse intercom crackles. “Captain, Miss Romanoff, I have saved a recording of the most recent test to your personal drives in my system.”

Tony sighs, shaking his head. “Et tu, brute?”

“You did program me to keep you humble, sir.”

“Did I also program you to remind me not to make that mistake again?” he asks, hauling himself and the armor over to the hydraulics station on the side of the test floor. He sets his boots into the floor clamps and braces his hands against the edges of the frame so that the arms—Dum-E and U’s significantly evolved cousins—can loosen the suit’s bolts.

“I’m afraid you did not, sir. Shall I add it to your calendar?”

Tony ignores him as he’s released from the armor and grabs a towel from the computer console to mop up the sweat on his brow. Forget the beam focuser. Air conditioning is the next thing he’s going to install. “So, Nat, how much does Barton want for the next mission?”

“Half, if you let him watch the test flight,” she says smugly.

“You’ve corrupted him. Turned him against me.”

“It’s called getting to know you, Stark.”

He tosses the sweaty towel at her head. She sidesteps neatly, but exhales through her nose to indicate that she’s amused.

“There’s not much left to do. Once I get the focusing algorithm set up and go over the flight tests, I can finalize the design. Might paint it or something, too. Color-code with Cap, as long as we can avoid the spangles.”

“It’s amazing, Tony.” Steve looks Tony in the eye and doesn’t stare at the glowing reactor in his chest like everyone else. “You’re amazing.” But then Cap hesitates. “You don’t have to do this.”

The sentence cuts off too soon, but Tony knows what he means to say.

“This isn’t for you, Steve. There’s a bigger picture. We all see it, ”

Technology is evolving faster than safeguards to protect against it. SHIELD is fractured, its agents scattered and at war. Another super-soldier—one they still haven’t managed to identify—roams free.

There's a storm on the horizon. The air is full of static, permeated with the scent of ozone.

It’s not something he can ignore. And they won’t ignore it either.

“Besides, we stand a better chance together. ”

**Author's Note:**

> Ceewelsh: Thanks to the mods without whom Pod-Together wouldn't exist and to Chimeraspeak for getting an email from me being like "...Wanna revisit this 'verse?" said yes and made my entire summer better! Come gush in the comments about this amazing story!  
> Chimeraspeak: This story wouldn’t exist without Ceewelsh. Her ideas, feedback, patience, and _incredible_ reading skills were the solid foundation for this work’s creation. I love what we’ve made, and I’m so excited to share it! I consider this podfic the definitive edition of this piece, and if you enjoyed it as much as I did, please don’t hesitate to let her know!


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